


at the door

by queenieofaces



Category: Sleepaway (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Horror, Summer Camp, photos taken seconds before disaster
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:07:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26013853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenieofaces/pseuds/queenieofaces
Summary: The things Steven left behind: a pack of wolves, an infectious bravery, and a tooth.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 3
Collections: Camp Howling Ground (Sleepaway 2020 campaign)





	at the door

On his first day at Camp Howling Ground, Steven climbs the oldest tree in the woods, just because Willis says he can’t. It’s not a hard climb--sure, he has to shimmy up the first bit of the trunk, but the wood is knobbled and offers plenty of hand- and footholds. He climbs until the branches bend precipitously under his weight, and then he plunks himself down in the cradle between the trunk and a branch. With his feet wedged securely against the trunk, he surveys the camp. To the north, he can see the spindly structure of the rope course. To the southwest, the creek glimmers and glints in the gaps between trees. Camp somehow seems even bigger from this high up, sprawling out so far he can’t see the edges of it. His fellow campers look so small--just little colored smudges on the ground, their faces upturned to track his progress.

“Told you so,” he says casually, when he rejoins the group. Willis stammers something and won’t meet his eyes.

This is Steven’s first year at camp, so he doesn’t know all the unspoken rules that have to be followed _or else_. He loses his interest in arts and crafts quickly--his bracelet is more a collection of haphazard knots than anything else. He doesn’t know that you have to hold your breath while passing the oldest cabins, and he always forgets to skip the third step up to the bunks. On the full moon, Kyle lets his first marshmallow go up in flames and mournfully watches it drip off the skewer and into the campfire in a cascade of burned sugar. “We have to,” he says, when Steven asks, “for the Witch.”

“What witch?” Steven asks, but across the fire Hailey just shakes her head and mimes zipping her mouth shut. All the campers know not to talk about the Witch where the counselors can hear.

Willis tells Steven about the Witch after lights out, a whispered conversation that Eli pretends not to hear and Charles is clearly eavesdropping on, hanging over the side of his bunk.

“That sounds fake,” Steven says, at the end of it. His father gave him the hazing talk--he’s starting high school next year, after all, and needs to be prepared--and he’s pretty sure this is just a ghost story meant to scare new campers.

Willis presses their lips together, clearly upset. “It’s _not_ fake.”

“Okay, then where’s your evidence?”

“You weren’t here last year,” Charles mutters darkly.

“Nobody asked you,” Willis says at the same time that Steven asks, “What happened last year?”

“Okay, that’s enough.” Eli speaks with the authority of a counselor-in-training, blanket pulled up to his chin and eyes screwed shut. “Go to sleep or I’ll report you to Penelope.”

Steven never quite falls in with the rest of the wolves. They’ve all been at Camp Howling Ground for years and years, and they move as a pack. They have so many little in-jokes, years and years of history in nicknames and unmarked places on the map and secret rituals they perform to keep camp safe. Hailey’s a hurricane in a teacup, a spear in want of a target to skewer. Eli’s returned to camp this year with a new name and new pronouns and a body that’s still trying to learn its own shape, but he speaks with an easy authority earned by half a dozen shared summers. Charles is constantly cracking bad jokes, but when he raises his voice in song around the campfire, Steven almost believes in magic. Willis knows the name of every flower that blooms at camp, and they stammer and blush every time Steven looks their way. It makes something fizz in the pit of Steven’s stomach. He thinks he likes it.

“We can’t,” Willis tells him, when he suggests sneaking out to stargaze. “The Witch will get us.”

“The Witch isn’t real,” Steven insists.

Willis shakes their head, but they still follow Steven on tiptoe around the counselors' cabin and across the fields.

(Steven doesn’t kiss Willis in the stargazing field, although he looks at them tracing the shape of constellations with their finger and thinks about it. _Next time_ , he decides, watching Willis clamber back over the abandoned stone wall, mortar crumbling to dust beneath the soles of their sneakers. _I’ll kiss them next time_.)

The wolves might be too tight-knit for Steven to properly join them, but the pups _love_ Steven. They’re new to camp or newish or young enough not to care. Steven is fearless, but, more importantly, he shares his bravery. He boosts Oak up to the first branch of trees they’re too short to climb. He takes Mariah’s hand when she’s spooked by a sound in the woods. He pushes through the tall grass without hesitation, tamping down a path for Luis to follow. 

When Kyle mournfully sacrifices another marshmallow to the Witch, Steven offers to help him find her. He lost his last baby tooth last week, and he’s feeling grown up and defiant. If the Witch is real, it’ll be easy enough to find her and negotiate, and if she isn’t, well, Steven will be right and all the other wolves will have to admit that they’re wrong. It’s a win-win situation. “C’mon,” he says, extending a hand to Kyle, “don’t you want to go on an adventure?”

It’s easy to slip out after hours; the hard part is coaxing Kyle out of the door of the bunks. In the field, the grass has grown long in the hours that Steven has been gone--it forms strange, jagged silhouettes against the starry sky. “There’s nothing to be scared of,” Steven insists, tugging Kyle forward. “It’s just--”

There. At the corner of his eye. There’s something there. There’s _someone_ \--

Kyle’s grip on his hand tightens. The back of Steven’s neck suddenly prickles. He’s not afraid. He’s Steven, the brave one--that’s his whole deal. Hailey is fierce and Charles is funny and Steven is fearless.

Slowly, so slowly, Steven turns his head.

Penelope stands at the edge of the field--but, no, it’s not Penelope. Steven’s absolutely sure it’s not Penelope. Why did he think it was Penelope? The tall grass bows out around her, like it’s trying not to touch her, forming a strange halo around her feet. She raises her finger to her lips.

Kyle shrieks, and the Witch vanishes.

Steven moves through the next day in a haze. It might be sleep-deprivation, but somehow camp feels...different. There’s something lurking in the shadows, something snarling just beyond the edges of his vision. When he closes his eyes, he can feel it stalking closer, so he doesn’t let himself close his eyes. Dodgeball with the other wolves goes vicious, animalistic, and Willis comes to lunch with an ice pack pressed to one eye. Mariah keeps bothering him for details about the Witch--Kyle told her, of course, because Kyle doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut. Eli shoots him sympathetic glances that he ignores.

Something has gone wrong, Steven knows. He can’t think over the gritty feeling at the corners of his eyes, over the pounding of his own heart. Something at camp has gone wrong. He doesn’t believe in the Witch--they must have seen someone else, a counselor on a nighttime stroll, maybe. They must have _thought_ they saw something that wasn’t really there.

It’s easy enough to slip away from the movie--the counselors are too distracted for roll call, huddled in the corner, whispering together. He doesn’t like movies anyway, and he’s itching to move. Something has gone wrong with camp, and Steven just wants to fix it. He just wants Kyle to stop crying, wants Hailey to look at him with respect, wants Willis to close that last inch of space between them.

The grass has grown tall again in the field, but Steven pushes through it without hesitation. He’s a wolf, all his baby teeth are gone, and he’s not afraid.

**Author's Note:**

> Some friends and I have been playing _Sleepaway_ , a tabletop roleplaying game by Jay Dragon about being counselors at a summer camp besieged by a monstrous cryptid. We've fallen in love with the setting and all the characters and have been writing a bunch of little ficlets for it--you can find the rest of them in the collection this fic has been posted to! Steven was a camper who died (pretty gruesomely) in our first session, so I figured that my contribution to the collection would be, in typical Queenie fashion, giving that loss a little more context.


End file.
